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Category: Project

Description: Abstract: Traditionally college instruction has focused on disciplinary knowledge leaving many students unprepared for the workforce. Our study asked whether graduate students embarking on careers as college instructors aim to teach employable skills. We adapted the Employable Skills Self-Efficacy Survey (Ciarocco & Strohmetz, 2018) to create a self-report instrument for instructors and administered it via an online survey to graduate students teaching college courses (N = 114; 70.2% women, M age = 30 years). After establishing scale reliability, we explored whether self-reported teaching of employable skills (four domains) was associated with teachers’ awareness of students’ goals, approaches to teaching, and teaching strategies. Graduate students reported teaching 1) communication and 2) analytical inquiry skills more than 3) collaboration or 4) professional development skills. Teachers’ awareness of students’ goals was associated with emphasis on employable skills across all domains except analytical inquiry. A conceptual-change, student-focused approach aligned with emphasis on communication, whereas an information-transmission, teacher-focused approach did not align at all with teaching employable skills. Although graduate students reported lecturing as their primary teaching strategy, lecturing was negatively associated with emphasis on communication and unrelated to other skills domains. In contrast, active learning was associated with communication and collaboration skills. While teaching research methodology was associated with all skills domains except communication, few instructors used data collection or lab activities in their classes. The results indicate the need for further training and support for new instructors to incorporate active learning and research activities across the curriculum as a means of teaching employable skills.